


That Kind of Woman

by mldrgrl



Series: Adventures of The Lady Detective and The Writer [43]
Category: Californication (TV), The Fall (TV 2013)
Genre: F/M, Pillow Talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-05
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-27 04:54:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13873563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mldrgrl/pseuds/mldrgrl
Summary: Someone thinks about the kind of woman Stella is





	That Kind of Woman

_ She never considered herself to be that kind of woman; the kind that pined for a lover or thought about things like their smell, their touch, their kiss.  Once the night was over, it was over.  She didn’t like to relive and she never liked to regret.  She could walk away from a one night stand and never think about it again.  Repeat performances were not something she wanted. _

 

_ She was not the type of woman to dig for information on someone she’d went to bed with after sharing half a drink at a hotel bar.  The less she knew, the better.  She absolutely wouldn’t use her resources to run their history through the network or program their phone number and address into her contacts.  They’d be lucky if she even remembered their name, if she even knew it at all.   _

 

_ She wasn’t the kind of woman who traveled any great distance for any lover, and great distance could very well be across the road.  She never drove to someone’s flat for a night.  She never went out of her way to meet at a restaurant (she absolutely never shared a meal with someone she intended to sleep with).  Not across the city, the country, definitely not across an ocean.  They came to her, not she to them.  She preferred it that way. _

 

_ She was positively not the kind of woman to pick up a lover’s shirt off the floor and slip it on.  There was no reason to.  She wasn’t the kind of woman who wanted to envelop herself in the scent of her lover or to bring the collar of the shirt she would never wear to her face just to breathe them in.  That kind of thing did not appeal to her.  _

 

_ She was not the kind of woman who needed a lover for more than scratching the proverbial itch.  Once the physical needs had been met, the job was over.  She was not the kind to cuddle, to make pillow-talk, to share, or to encouraging sharing.  Talking was overrated and talking led to emotional attachment.  She wasn’t the kind of woman that had time for the complications that arose from it. _

 

_ Any and all of the above, to slip once, could be accidental.  Perhaps she had let her guard down for a moment.  Perhaps she was only curious to know what it would be like.  Perhaps she wasn’t in her right mind at the time. _

 

_ Twice, though.  Twice was already a habit.  Who was she, to call him after a one night stand?  Who was she, to show up unannounced in a foreign country with him as the destination?  Who was she, to drown herself in his arms and his scent and his shirts and his body and his home?  Who was she, to ask him to come to her when she was feeling low?  Who was she, to do it all over again?  And again?  And again? _

 

_ Maybe she was that kind of woman.  Maybe she only told herself that she wasn’t.  Maybe she wanted what everyone else wanted, but she was too afraid or too stubborn or too scarred or too impatient to find out.  Maybe she was just waiting for the right one to come along. _

 

Stella lowered the yellow legal pad to her lap and looked at Hank.  He was reclined against the pillows, propped up by the headboard of their bed.  She was cross-legged facing him near the end of the bed, somewhere next to his feet.  He plucked at invisible lint on the sheet.

 

“Well?” he asked.

 

“It’s a little difficult to read,” she answered.  “As you might imagine.”

 

“It’s fiction.  At the end of the day...I know that doesn’t mean much.  You asked, though.”

 

“I did.  Yes, I did ask.”

 

“It didn’t go any further than this.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“I don’t know, it just didn’t...are you pissed?”

 

“Not at all.”

 

“Then come up here, Sherlock, because you’re making me feel like an asshole all the way over there.”

 

“You come here.”

 

Hank’s lips twitched and puckered briefly before he pushed himself away from the pillows and crawled towards Stella.  He tossed the legal pad from her lap to the floor and kissed her down to the mattress.  She wrapped her arms around his neck to go slower.  He settled into the welcoming frame of her thighs and her legs locked around his hips, holding him there.  He lifted his head out of their kiss and stared down at her.  

 

“What were your intentions?” Stella asked.

 

“What do you mean?” Hank replied, tipping his head in question.

 

“The woman in your story.”

 

“I hadn’t thought about it.”

 

Stella raised her brows a little and dropped her eyes to Hank’s mouth.  Her fingertips circled his shoulderblades very lightly.  “I don’t believe you,” she said, her voice low and quiet.  “Tell me.”

 

“I didn’t have intentions,” he protested, shaking his head a little, but then rolling his gaze away from her.  “Not ones I fully realized.  I just...I thought a lot about how it would be different if she allowed herself to love someone.  You know, it was just me working shit out at the time.  It didn’t mean anything.”

 

“Would she have married?  Is that what you thought would happen?”

 

“I figured she’d walk away.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because it’s tragic.  And it seemed in character.”

 

Stella stopped circling Hank’s shoulders with her fingertips and loosely wrapped her arms back around his neck.  He sighed a little and tried to roll away from her, but she held him fast.  He shrugged apologetically.

 

“I don’t think there’s such a thing,” she said.

 

“As what?”

 

“In character.”

 

“There has to be.”

 

“I was unaware that you were such a stickler for rules, Watson.”

 

Hank shifted his hips and dragged his pelvis down against hers just enough to be enticing.  “Does it turn you on at all?” he asked.

 

“Not much.”

 

Hank growled at Stella and bent his head to take one of her breasts into his mouth.  He pinched her nipple through her t-shirt with his front teeth and she arched her back.  “Tease,” she griped, when he pulled away with a grin.

 

“Do you know what baffled me more than anything?” he asked.

 

“I can’t say that I do.”

 

Hank adjusted his weight to one elbow and slid his hand up under Stella’s t-shirt from her hip to the breast he’d just bitten.  He held his hand cupped over her breast for a few moments and then lifted two of his fingers to tap the inside of her shirt - his shirt, really.

 

“You’ve got a whole drawer full of pajamas,” he said.  “But, you’d rather wear my day old t-shirts straight from the hamper.  Why is that?”

 

“That’s been puzzling you?”

 

“Since LA.”

 

“You theorized something in that story, how did you put it?  She wasn’t one to envelope herself in the scent of a lover?”

 

“It’s  _ fiction _ .  Was I right?”

 

“Maybe I was trying to be enticing.”

 

“Bull shit!” Hank scoffed.  “You could never respect me if you thought you had to try to entice me in that way.”

 

Stella smiled.  “I think you’ll be rather disappointed with the answer.”

 

“Lay it on me, Sherlock.”

 

“They’re soft, and they’re comfortable.”

 

“That’s it?  That’s the reason?”

 

“I do enjoy the scent of you on me, I will admit.”

 

“I do too.”  Hank massaged Stella’s breast again and then moved his hand south, heading towards her panties as if to emphasize his point.  He stopped when his fingers brushed lace though, and she frowned and shifted her hips.

 

“What?” she asked.

 

“Why’d you ask?”

 

“About the story?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Your essay for The New Yorker.”

 

“You read that?”

  
  


“Of course I read it.  You described writing  _ Them _ and how a muse takes shape for you.  It made me think.”

 

Hank chuckled and his his lips puckered as though on the verge of a comment.  Instead, he kissed her chin and then her neck, still chuckling as he finally slipped his hand down over and into her warm swell of supple flesh.  She tipped her head back, breathing deeply.

 

“You wanted to know if you were my muse?” he breathed against her collar and then ran his nose up along her neck to the back of her ear.

 

“I know that book was the sum of many different parts.  And I know what my...my...fuck, you’re too good at this sometimes, I’m going to…”

 

“Uh huh.”

 

Stella cursed under her breath and then sucked in a breath.  She bit her lip and the muscles in her neck strained as she pushed her shoulders back and arched off the bed.

 

“Might be a new record,” Hank said.

 

“Possibly,” she breathed.

 

“You were saying?”

 

“I don’t know what I was saying.”

 

“You were thinking about  _ Them _ and you wanted to know what else you might have inspired?”

 

“Is that what I was thinking?”

 

“Is it?”

 

“I’d only wondered what else you may have written about me.”

 

“You have nothing to worry about, Sherlock.  I find you very inspiring.”

 

“I wasn’t worried.”

 

“Good.”

 

“Talking of inspiration, why are you still dressed?  Normally you’d be inside me by now.”

 

“Nag.”

 

Stella pushed Hank’s jeans over his hips with her feet to help him along.  He moved up so she could slide her panties off her legs, but instead of moving back down over her, he pulled her up and into his lap.  She sank down slowly, her knees on either side of his hips.

 

“Have you decided about the honeymoon yet?” he asked.

 

“I’ve been thinking about Switzerland.”

 

“Switzerland?  Isn’t it cold as fuck there?”

 

“I’d like to go skiing.”

 

“Like on big, fucking, snowy mountains full of abominable snowmen?”

 

“You don’t like the idea?”

 

“No, no, I can sit by a fire in a lodge and drink hot toddie before a bearskin rug while you run off with Sven the ski instructor on our honeymoon.”

 

“That is simply ridiculous.  I don’t need lessons.”

 

“No, I bet you don’t.”

 

“Could we discuss this after we fuck, please?”

 

“That’s right, you’re not the kind of woman that likes pillow talk.”  

 

Stella grabbed Hank by the hair and kissed the smirk off his face because that’s the kind of woman she was, and she was the kind of woman he loved.

 

The End


End file.
